Just whos devastated? Because its not the banks
A circle in hell has been set aside for financiers who fleece ordinary folks. This hot place has long rung with demands of death to the agency that protects working Americans from their pillage. President Trump is on the case as he tries to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by putting its enemies in charge.
Established in the rubble of the economic meltdown, the bureau’s job is to go after the financial rackets that target the working class — abusive mortgages, student loans created to fail, credit card trickery and payday loans charging 400 percent annual interest. It even gets money back for some people.
But milking the economically vulnerable has become a very big business for the highest names in American finance, as well as the lowest. The less sophisticated the borrowers the easier to trap them in a sea of small-print legalese, the outrageous terms carefully hidden.
The consumer-focused agency’s existence, of course, drives Wall Street nuts. “Wall Street hates it like the devil hates holy water,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, said.
For much of the financial industry, the prized “customer” is a working stiff who has a job and a steady trickle of income to siphon off. Credit card companies, for example, love the borrower who racks up big balances and rolls them from month to month at interest rates often exceeding 20 percent. Some of the biggest names in U.S. finance — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — are making billions off unpaid credit balances.
http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/harrop-just-whos-devastated-because-its-not-the-banks/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=4a2e7e3854-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-4a2e7e3854-228635337
